Dra6o0n

Just bombs would be fine, firearms are essentially 'part' explosives.

Maybe other than 'actual' dinosaurs... It could be a sort of 'fantasy' race of sentient beings like Lizardmens and Beastmen and such that roams and lives in the wilds as tribes? Would actually be interesting to see a pseudo ingame 'AI' of sorts where they 'observe' you and responds in a curious way to your actions... Like in "The Forest" and "Sons of the Forest"?

Maybe a beginner village or POI of fellow tribesmen? The idea is that you spawn in a 'safe' area due to the existence of your tribe living there with you as you learn the game and do tutorial stuff maybe? And once you finish the tutorial 'something big' happens.

Something like a Azeron Cyborg maybe, but amazon isn't selling any as it's unavailable lol. It's like a claw based gaming controller for your left hand with a joystick and multiple inputs to bind and use.

I think animals, especially predators like bears, should leave tracks, that you can discover and realize there's one around you.

While there should be good mechanisms behind sleep, you should not punish players for stretching out their gameplay without sleeping ingame or whatnot. I think instead of making it a powerful mechanism, you implement 'Sanity' like in Don't Starve. Sleeping would have impact on sanity, rather than fatigue. And rather than Sanity functioning statistically, it should offer gameplay changes to your 'visuals' and 'audio'. Low sanity causes you to become insomniac, and sleep is one of the factors to raise sanity up. With low sanity you go into different stages of insanity, the milder ones are very faint and barely noticeable, with the deep insanity be akin to a nightmare or horror game. Key elements affected is 'sound' of environment, and 'sound' of creatures and other players, and maybe visuals of monsters. Ambience would be much louder in volume than normal, and 'normal' sounds is slightly muffled. Certain creatures will have a audio filtered so make their voices sound 'different', if not scary. Footstep noises are elevated, so you can clearly hear every footsteps in a certain radius. And supernatural entities and 'monsters' will be more disfigured, with a weird 'static' buzzing effect covering their bodies as if it's not stable and their bodies are glitching out.

I can see fishing nets and fish traps having a use but also attract attention from other creatures too... Bears would love a snack that's easy to access.

Combination of Sails and Oars, with the sail boat based on what type it is and if multiple players are around. So like Valheim but more control over rowing of the boat when there is no wind. If players are riding the boat and seated where the oars are at, they will automatically row it on command from the player controlling the ship. But at minimum the player controlling the ship contributes a small portion to rowing power, if there is no wind to sail with. With the use of gears for bigger ships, you can have hand or feet cranked gears to turn a propeller below the ship's rear, for a small speed.

Using bone to craft arrowheads or shafts maybe? If you have lots of bones then they can be used in high quantity to make better quality arrows. Making spikes out of bones and turning them into natural environmental hazards to protect yourself from enemies and even to trick mobs into pitfall traps? Durability is the name of the game here, wooden spikes breaks after a few uses, but bone spikes lasts somewhat longer.

No backwards compatibility either?

If you just want a game screen, you can look into the paid software 'Virtual Desktop' for the Meta Quest 3 or such. Or launch this game from a similar VR environment that enables desktop view.

It's less about the situation and more on the logical mechanics of the drifter's rock throwing ability. Imagine 10 of them piled up at the bottom of a cliff and you above, you peek around the corner and you get nailed with 10 rocks, losing health consistently. Someone should go into creative mode and spawn them to test out their rock throwing ability, lock them into a special platform where they can only shoot out of a hole. Think minecraft arrow dispensers, except rocks.

There are interesting new enemy variants and drifters that could make things harder on the player, with unique AI designs behind them... Ghosts could be an interesting enemy type and mechanic, with possession mechanics to give players hallucinations. When you are awake and it's night time, you can get hallucinations from ghosts. Which makes you see or hear things randomly (not often creepy, but could be something to mislead you). If you attempt to sleep in a bed while possessed, you get a nightmare debuff, which will allows you to pass the time to day, but at a cost of your energy being sapped. Light can be a factor to fend off possession, being near it will ward the ghost off and they will despawn if they can't reach you for a period of time. The presence of other players also wards them off but only if there is some light nearby. They automatically despawn once day arrives.

The atmosphere and survival aspect of not knowing what to do, where to go, and what to gather creates that sense of dread. But once you get knowledgeable of the game it's less scary to dive into caves and whatnot. To add more dread is to have more 'unknowns' but that means players who play longer will get over it sooner.

What if reload speeds differ if you equip and use ammo from a quiver, versus loading them from the hotbar or inventory? Like +0.75 seconds if reloading from hotbar. +1.50 seconds if reloading from 'inventory' (stored in one of the other containers).

Actually for crafting complexity, it might be a interesting idea if say the 3x3 is the 'center' and is the simpler recipes. Then when you use a workbench, it's a 3x3 with a outer slots surrounding it, making it 5x5, but 3x3 recipes still works if used solely there. Then a better "crafting table" that can be utilized late game that's 7x7, requiring even more materials and components to build stuff there. So 3x3 works for 'small' objects. Something you can easily grip in either hands. 5x5 is 'medium' objects. By scale is something the size of a character like plows or machines. and then 7x7 are 'large' objects... And are akin to 'building' large devices or contraptions akin to say a ox cart or something maybe? So when I say 'large' construction, I mean something like a 'assembly' layout on the ground in front of said crafting interface, so you construct vehicles and install parts to it.

Makes sense, maybe revamp it by making stone paths having '3d' bump maps at the top so it will look like solid stones up top?

They can reuse the crafting grid in the workbench, but make it a 5x5 layout.

Horror is basically not really a physical element, but the unknown lingering in people's psyche. What people fear aren't the literal zombies or ghosts in games, but the concept of unknown behind these entities, like not knowing how many is around, how much of a threat they are, and if you are going to expect them to pop up or not. Once the monster spawns and exists in front of you the fear will diminish over time the more you watch it move around and act.

It's probably because a straight path is shorter distance than a roundabout path. Though swimming in water is way slower than moving on land.

Pretty sure it will come naturally, but too much horror at once and some of the more passive players who wants a sandbox experience, might not like it. For instance the sort of horror that should be in the game, should be oriented to specific areas or trigger, so someone farming in base shouldn't suddenly get the chills like the grudge is stalking them.

Basically "Corrupted" creatures.

Rabies and other diseases?

I'm not sure if it would be using the concept of radiation, but toxic fog or mist can be possible. For instance it's a biome below ground level where a deadly fog persist that is very poisonous, and there are ruins in there from a ancient civilization. The importance of activated charcoal would be a material to use for such a toxic area, and coated tubes deployed to have breathing masks and such being a possible technology to use to 'provide fresh air' from the surface down into the fog. You would deploy contraptions that helps you route longer paths into the ruins to explore, as you hold your breath and use the tubes to breathe in there. Perhaps the ancient civilization was originally built above sea level, but then got destroyed by a flood which released some sort of toxic material, and when the water receded, it then created a foggy terrain.

Or, if an animal is cornered and can attack the player, it will warn the player before attacking. You wouldn't expect a cornered rabbit to bite a chunk out of you right?